


a tough hide and a tender heart

by honey_wheeler



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Puppy Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-01
Updated: 2012-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-06 12:10:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/418779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s prettier than any girl Sam’s ever seen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a tough hide and a tender heart

**Author's Note:**

> From the kinkmeme prompt: Sam/Sansa, because everyone needs someone awesome like Sam.

She’s prettier than any girl Sam’s ever seen. Of course, he hasn’t been around that many; Jon is pretty-faced enough to attract women from the Neck to the North, but Sam knows it takes a rarer breed of lady to notice someone fat and pale and stammering, and books had always yielded up their mysteries to him far more readily. Sam has no particular skills or charms. He’s never been good at flattery. The one thing he’s good at is being kind. It’s just lucky that’s something Sansa is starving for.

She thinks he looks after her for Jon, watching over her while Jon fights White Walkers at the Dragon Queen’s side. And that is part of it, but Sam thinks he’d care for her even if she wasn’t his best friend’s only remaining sister. She’d looked brittle the first time he saw her, worn and weary, but she’d smiled so graciously and looked at Sam with kind eyes as though she truly saw him. He’d felt a lurch in his ribs that had nothing to do with her beauty, though it was considerable. A tender heart always recognizes itself in others, he thinks.

There’s little at Castle Black to please a young girl, but still Sam finds small things for her: a shard of ice the blue of her eyes; a lemon unearthed from the stores to put in her tea as he apologizes that there’s no flour to make it into one of the cakes Jon says she likes; a book of songs so old it’s riddled with holes. Sansa makes up the tune where it’s missing, her voice clear and strong, far sweeter than the cold howl of the wind. She never seems to mind how often he asks her to sing for him.

She likes to walk atop the Wall, staring into the mountains as if to see Jon in the distance. No matter how she tries to keep her hood up, the wind pulls long streamers of hair free to snap like the banners, bright and shiny as a new copper penny. Sam wishes he could touch them, wanting to know if her hair feels as soft as it looks, but it wouldn’t be proper. She wouldn’t want him to.

“When did you take the black, Sam?” she asks, her words almost swallowed by the wind.

“Years ago,” he says. “I took my oath the same day Jon did, out at the weirwood.”

“But you are Southron, are you not?” she asks, turning to look at him curiously. “You took Jon’s gods?” He blushes at the question, at the intimacy it implies. These Starks have a way of getting Sam flustered, it seems.

“My own gods hadn’t done me much good,” he says. She nods as if satisfied, turning to stare out at the blinding white once more.

“Sometimes I think my life would be easier if I could take the black,” she says. “The idea of being wed to duty holds a certain appeal. No husband, no children, no more to lose.”

“Oh no,” Sam says before he can think better of it. “It would be such a waste.” She looks at him sharply, all softness gone from her face, and Sam quails before her, thinks for the first time that maybe she’s not as brittle and delicate as she seems.

“A waste?” she asks. “Of my beauty, I presume.” Her voice suggests she’s heard such things too often and found them lacking. Sam could smack himself. He always bumbles his words with girls. He’d been tongue-tied around Gilly for moons before he could speak to her without making himself a fool.

“Forgive me, Lady Stark, that’s not what I meant. I meant only…” He hesitates, knowing that what he means to say is something not easily put in words. “I meant only that you have too much love in you not to share it.” It surprises her, he can see. But in a good way, he thinks. He hopes. 

“I see.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not good at sweet words,” he mumbles. He ducks his head, studies the toes of his boots as if proper words are scribbled upon them. Her hand on his cheek is warm compared to the air, even in its glove, and he starts at it, jerks his head up swiftly enough that he slips a bit on the ice that hasn’t been salted away yet.

“They sounded quite sweet to me,” she tells him, cupping his cheek with her hand. Then she brushes her lips against his, holding them there long enough for his heart to start a pounding so loud he’s sure she can hear. “I think you’re the same sort of waste, Sam.”

The words warm his heart, make it feel light and airy. They warm him even more than her hand does when she slips it into his and continues her walk along the Wall, pulling him to flutter behind her like a kite.


End file.
